BIRMINGHAM, England, Sept. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- UK National Bat Conference -- Wildlife Acoustics, the leading supplier of acoustic monitoring systems for endangered and threatened wildlife species around the world, announces a new handheld bat detector and recorder, the Echo Meter EM3.

"Wildlife Acoustics has leveraged its vast experience in ultrasonic and acoustic monitoring to bring unparalleled functionality to bat researchers," said Ian Agranat, President and CEO of Wildlife Acoustics. "We are excited to offer the new EM3 with a comprehensive feature set at a fraction of the price of competing solutions."

The Echo Meter EM3 is easy to hold, lightweight (weighing less than .35 kg), and fully self-contained, requiring no additional hardware to actively monitor and record bats. The EM3 ships with built-in rechargeable batteries plus an SDHC memory card so customers can start monitoring bats upon product arrival.

The EM3 has recently been in the hands of a global network of bat experts. Leif Gjerde from the Nordic Chiroptera Information Center commented, "The Echo Meter is an all-in-one detector that has huge potentials, and eventually will make all other detectors obsolete."

The EM3 showcases new microphone technology designed from the ground up for ultrasonic bat detecting. "The high-frequency response is great. One immediate observation was the harmonic content of the calls, especially the capturing and rendering of the third harmonic," says Greg Falxa, bat researcher with Cascadia Research in the United States.

The EM3 trigger feature together with the GPS option is particularly useful for driving surveys. "I had recordings and a file with corresponding coordinates that I could copy and paste into the major online mapping sites," continues Greg.

The real-time spectrogram displays current and recent bat passes in expanded or compressed mode to see a history of bat calls. Excited about EM3's capability and features, Paul Howden-Leach, senior ecologist at Baker Consultants in the United Kingdom said, "I tested the EM3 live on site last night for the first time and it is a unique piece of kit. Finally we have access to something that not only captures and records bat calls, but also shows the calls in real-time as they come in on the screen."

Users monitor bat calls with headphones or the built-in speaker. Bat passes are recorded while the user simultaneously listens to bat calls in the method of choice: Heterodyne, Frequency Division, or Wildlife Acoustics' patent pending Real Time Expansion mode. Dr. Cori Lausen of Birchdale Ecological in Canada says, "When mist netting I use several types of bat detectors for various purposes. Because the EM3 has all of these technologies rolled into one, it is now possible to carry just this one detector instead. What I like best is the built-in screen for viewing real-time sonograms. Being able to visualize the sonograms is important to my field work, and I appreciate the ease with which you can get this information using such a compact unit."

As the most flexible heterodyne detector on the market, the EM3's Auto-Het feature automatically tunes the detector based on the echolocation frequency. Users program up to four frequency presents to rapidly tune into a bat call in heterodyne and then fine tune any frequency settings with the easy to use button navigation.

The EM3 also captures voice notes along with the bat passes in the same trigger for easy direct correlation. Users may categorize or tag a bat call in real-time in one of four categories to facilitate post processing.

The Echo Meter EM3 is available for pre-order and will be shipping fall 2011 starting at US $999.